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Understanding spatial distributions of invasive plant species at early infestation stages is critical for assessing the dynamics and underlying factors of invasions. Recent progress in very high resolution remote sensing is facilitating this task by providing high spatial detail over whole-site extents that are prohibitive to comprehensive ground surveys. This study assessed the opportunities and constraints to characterize landscape distribution of the invasive grass medusahead (Elymus caput-medusae) in a ∼36.8 ha grassland in California, United States from 0.15m-resolution visible/near-infrared aerial imagery at the stage of late spring phenological contrast with dominant grasses. We compared several object-based unsupervised, single-run supervised and hierarchical approaches to classify medusahead using spectral, textural, and contextual variables. Fuzzy accuracy assessment indicated that 44–100% of test medusahead samples were matched by its classified extents from different methods, while 63–83% of test samples classified as medusahead had this class as an acceptable candidate. Main sources of error included spectral similarity between medusahead and other green species and mixing of medusahead with other vegetation at variable densities. Adding texture attributes to spectral variables increased the accuracy of most classification methods, corroborating the informative value of local patterns under limited spectral data. The highest accuracy across different metrics was shown by the supervised single-run support vector machine with seven vegetation classes and Bayesian algorithms with three vegetation classes; however, their medusahead allocations showed some “spillover” effects due to misclassifications with other green vegetation. This issue was addressed by more complex hierarchical approaches, though their final accuracy did not exceed the best single-run methods. However, the comparison of classified medusahead extents with field segments of its patches overlapping with survey transects indicated that most methods tended to miss and/or over-estimate the length of the smallest patches and under-estimate the largest ones due to classification errors. Overall, the study outcomes support the potential of cost-effective, very high-resolution sensing for the site-scale detection of infestation hotspots that can be customized to plant phenological schedules. However, more accurate medusahead patch delineation in mixed-cover grasslands would benefit from testing hyperspectral data and using our study’s framework to inform and constrain the candidate vegetation classes in heterogeneous locations.

A number of spider species within the family Theridiidae exhibit a dramatic abdominal (opisthosomal) color polymorphism. The polymorphism is inherited in a broadly Mendelian fashion and in some species consists of dozens of discrete morphs that are convergent across taxa and populations. Few genomic resources exist for spiders. Here, as a first necessary step towards identifying the genetic basis for this trait we present the near complete transcriptomes of two species: the Hawaiian happy-face spider Theridion grallator and Theridion californicum. We mined the gene complement for pigment-pathway genes and examined differential expression (DE) between morphs that are unpatterned (plain yellow) and patterned (yellow with superimposed patches of red, white or very dark brown).

Results:

By deep sequencing both RNA-seq and normalized cDNA libraries from pooled specimens of each species we were able to assemble a comprehensive gene set for both species that we estimate to be 98-99% complete. It is likely that these species express more than 20,000 protein-coding genes, perhaps 4.5% (ca. 870) of which might be unique to spiders. Mining for pigment-associated Drosophila melanogaster genes indicated the presence of all ommochrome pathway genes and most pteridine pathway genes and DE analyses further indicate a possible role for the pteridine pathway in theridiid color patterning.

Conclusions:

Based upon our estimates, T. grallator and T. californicum express a large inventory of protein-coding genes. Our comprehensive assembly illustrates the continuing value of sequencing normalized cDNA libraries in addition to RNA-seq in order to generate a reference transcriptome for non-model species. The identification of pteridine-related genes and their possible involvement in color patterning is a novel finding in spiders and one that suggests a biochemical link between guanine deposits and the pigments exhibited by these species.

Conflict between livestock producers and wild predators is a central driver of large predator declines and simultaneously may imperil the lives and livelihoods of livestock producers. There is a growing recognition that livestock–predator conflict is a socio‐ecological problem, but few case studies exist to guide conflict research and management from this point of view. Here we present a case study of coyote‐sheep predation on a California ranch in which we combine methods from the rapidly growing field of predation risk modeling with participatory mapping of perceptions of predation risk. Our findings reveal an important selection bias that may occur when producer perceptions and decisions are excluded from ecological methods of studying conflict. We further demonstrate how producer inputs, participatory mapping, and ecological modeling of conflict can inform one another in understanding patterns, drivers, and management opportunities for livestock–predator conflict. Finally, we make recommendations for improving the interoperability of ecological and social data about predation risk. Collectively our methods offer a socio‐ecological approach that fills important research gaps and offers guidance to future research.

Academic libraries want to collect the materials most useful to researchers, yet how can libraries know how successful they are? While Berkeley’s George and Mary Foster Anthropology Library collects data on which books circulate, it is difficult to evaluate how materials are actually being used to further the discipline of anthropology. In this article, we examine sources cited by our a) faculty members, b) dissertation writers, and c) honors thesis students to better understand how anthropologists read when conducting research. This paper compares materials used across subfields and research levels to highlight patterns in citations within this discipline, leading to new insights that will improve collection development among anthropology librarians.

This case study recounts a process of course design, conduct, and evaluation for a single-session chemical information literacy class using guided and team-based learning. This approach incorporates active learning, worked examples, process worksheets, and POGIL elements. The instruction followed an iterative cycle of learning exercises whereby (1) the instructor introduces an information problem or task through a short presentation, (2) student teams collaboratively work through process worksheets that guide them through the technical and analytical tasks of resolving the information problem or task, (3) the instructor serves as a facilitator to address learning needs that arise during the exercise, while student teams analyze and reflect upon the learning activity and concepts, and afterwards, (4) the class engages in a discussion as an opportunity for evaluation, further exploration, and peer instruction. Overall, the guided and team-based learning approach offers opportunities to observe student progress closely and forges a collaborative spirit between students and the instructor for an engaging and rewarding experience.

Even the largest research library can no longer build comprehensive collections from all countries and in all languages. The pressure to justify acquisitions can be great on non-English language materials, which are often low-use in North American universities. Determining the research need for these materials, and assessing how well it is being met, is challenging. This paper analyzes impact by examining the language of cited references in doctoral dissertations at Berkeley, 2008-2015.

This is the transcript of an oral history interview, part of the "Librarians Navigating Change" Oral History Project on eScholarship.org

This document is part of the “Librarians Navigating Change” Oral History Project collection in eScholarship.org. The materials in this document are scans of UC Berkeley Library handouts and miscellanea from the early 1990s.

This document is part of the “Librarians Navigating Change” Oral History Project collection in eScholarship.org. It is the slide deck from a workshop (presented as part of the University of California Love Data Week events, on February 12, 2025) titled “Oral History Methodology for the Qualitative Researcher.” While the slides and transcript links are available on the main Project page, you can also find the full recorded presentation on the UC Berkeley Library Data Services Program YouTube page.

In September 1666, a fire sparked in a bakery on Pudding Lane grew until it had destroyed four-fifths of central London. The rebuilding efforts that followed not only launched the careers of some of London's most famous architects, but also transformed Londoners' relationship to their city by underscoring the ways that people could shape a city's spaces—and the ways that a city's spaces could shape its people. Movable Londons looks to the Restoration theater to understand how the dispossessed made London into a modern city after the Great Fire of 1666 and how the introduction of changeable scenery in theaters altered how Londoners conceptualized the city. Fawcett makes a claim for the centrality of unplanned spaces and the role of the Restoration theater in articulating those spaces as the modern city emerged and argues that movable scenery revolutionized London's public theaters, inviting audiences to observe how the performers—many of them hailing from the same communities as their characters—navigated the stage.

In recent years, there has been an increased interest in exploring the connections between various disciplines of mathematics and theoretical physics such as representation theory, algebraic geometry, quantum field theory, and string theory. One of the challenges of modern mathematical physics is to understand rigorously the idea of quantization. The program of quantization by branes, which comes from string theory, is explored in the book.This open access book provides a detailed description of the geometric approach to the representation theory of the double affine Hecke algebra (DAHA) of rank one. Spherical DAHA is known to arise from the deformation quantization of the moduli space of SL(2,C) flat connections on the punctured torus. The authors demonstrate the study of the topological A-model on this moduli space and establish a correspondence between Lagrangian branes of the A-model and DAHA modules.The finite-dimensional DAHA representations are shown to be in one-to-one correspondence with the compact Lagrangian branes. Along the way, the authors discover new finite-dimensional indecomposable representations. They proceed to embed the A-model story in an M-theory brane construction, closely related to the one used in the 3d/3d correspondence; as a result, modular tensor categories behind particular finite-dimensional representations with PSL(2,Z) action are identified. The relationship of Coulomb branch geometry and algebras of line operators in 4d N = 2* theories to the double affine Hecke algebra is studied further by using a further connection to the fivebrane system for the class S construction.The book is targeted at experts in mathematical physics, representation theory, algebraic geometry, and string theory.

This book explores the role of traditional East Asian worldviews, ethical values, and common practices in the shaping of East Asian narratives in literature and film. It offers a specific method for this analysis. The interpretive goal is to arrive at interpretations that more accurately engage cultural information so that narratives are understood more closely in terms of their native cultural rather than that of the reader/interpreter. Current neuroscience related to processes of perception and the attribution of meaning form the basis for the theory of interpretation offered in the first half of the volume.

The Copyright Alternative in Small-Claims Enforcement Act of 2020 (CASE Act) was swept into law during the final days of 2020 as a part of the 5,500 page federal spending bill. In theory, the CASE Act aims to provide a venue for individual creators (such as photographers, graphic artists, musicians) to address smaller copyright infringement claims without spending the time and money required to pursue a copyright infringement lawsuit in Federal court. In reality, however, this additional bureaucratic structure created outside of the traditional court system is fraught with problems that will mostly incentivize large, well-resourced rightsholders or overly litigious copyright owners to take advantage of the system. At the same time, it will confuse and harm innocuous users of content, who may not understand the complexities of copyright law, and who do not know whether or how to respond to a notice of infringement via this small claims process. From our perspective, it will chill users who rely on crucial statutory exceptions to copyright, such as fair use, in their research and teaching activities.

UC Berkeley Library secured a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to support an Institute for Advanced Topics in the Digital Humanities to help key stakeholders to learn to better navigate legal issues in text data mining. UC Berkeley Library’s Office of Scholarly Communication Services led a national team from more than a dozen institutions and organizations to teach humanities researchers, librarians, and research staff how to confidently navigate the major legal issues that arise in text data mining research. 

Our institute was called Building Legal Literacies for Text Data Mining (Building LLTDM), and ran from June 23-26, 2020.

This white paper describes the institute’s origins and goals, project overview and activities, and reflections and possible follow-on actions.

Legal Literacies for Text Data Mining - Cross-Border (“LLTDM-X”) is a National Endowment for the Humanities Level 1 Advancement Grant project addressing legal and ethical issues faced by U.S. digital humanities (DH) practitioners whose text data mining (TDM) research and practice intersects with foreign-held or - licensed content, or involves international cooperations.

LLTDM-X is a collaboration between the University of California Berkeley Library and Internet Archive, and builds upon the previous NEH-sponsored institute, Building Legal Literacies for Text Data Mining (Building LLTDM). That institute provided guidance and strategies to DH TDM researchers on navigating legal literacies for text data mining (including copyright, contracts, privacy, and ethics) within a U.S. context.

A common challenge highlighted during Building LLTDM was the fact that TDM practitioners encounter numerous and complex legal problems in cross-border TDM research. These occur when: (i) the materials practitioners want to mine are housed in a foreign jurisdiction, or are otherwise subject to foreign database licensing or laws; (ii) the human subjects they are studying or who created the underlying content reside in another country; or, (iii) the colleagues with whom they are collaborating reside abroad, yielding uncertainty about which country’s laws, agreements, and policies apply.

We designed LLTDM-X to identify and better understand the cross-border issues that DH TDM practitioners face, with the aim of using these issues to inform prospective research and education. We also hoped that LLTDM-X would yield preliminary guidance to benefit researchers in the meantime, as instructional materials are being developed. In early 2023, we hosted a series of three online round tables with U.S.-based cross-border TDM practitioners (“Practitioners”), and law and ethics experts (“Experts”) practicing in six countries. The round table conversations were structured to illustrate the empirical issues that researchers face, and also for the Practitioners to benefit from guidance on legal and ethical challenges. Upon the completion of the round tables, the LLTDM-X project team created a robust and hypothetical case study that (i) reflects the observed cross-border LLTDM issues and (ii) contains analysis to facilitate the development of future instructional materials.

The European Union's (EU) market integration project has dramatically altered economic activity around Europe. This book presents evidence on how trade has increased, jobs have been created, and European business has been reorganized. The changes in the economy have been accompanied by dramatic changes in how people from different societies interact. This book argues that these changes have produced a truly transnational European society. The book explores the nature of that society and its relationship to the creation of a European identity, popular culture, and politics. Much of the current political conflict around Europe can be attributed to who is and who is not involved in European society. Business owners, managers, professionals, white-collar workers, the educated, and the young have all benefited from European economic integration, specifically by interacting more and more with their counterparts in other societies. They tend to think of themselves as Europeans. Older, poorer, less educated, and blue-collar citizens have benefited less. They view the EU as intrusive on national sovereignty, or they fear its pro-business orientation will overwhelm the national welfare states. They have maintained national identities. There is a third group of mainly-middle class citizens who see the EU in mostly positive terms and sometimes — but not always — think of themselves as Europeans. It is this swing group that is most critical for the future of the European project. If they favor more European cooperation, politicians will oblige. But, if they prefer that policies remain wedded to the nation, European cooperation will stall.

This book is freely available in an open access edition thanks to the generous support of the University of California Libraries.

Most Americans are insulated from the poor; it is hard to imagine the challenges of poverty, the daily fears of crime and victimization, the frustration of not being able to provide for a child. Instead, we are often exposed to the rhetoric and hyperbole about the excesses of the American welfare system. These messages color our perception of the welfare problem in the United States and they close the American mind to a full understanding of the complexity of family poverty. But who are these poor families? What do we know about how they arrived in such desperate straits? Is poverty their fate for a lifetime or for only a brief period? Faces of Poverty answers these questions as it dispels the misconceptions and myths about welfare and the welfare population that have clouded the true picture of poverty in America. Over the course of a year, the author spent numerous hours as a participant-observer with five women and their families, documenting their daily activities, thoughts, and fears as they managed the strains of poverty. We meet Ana, Sandy, Rebecca, Darlene, and Cora, all of whom, at some point, have turned to welfare for support. Each represents a wider segment of the welfare population, ranging from Ana (who lost a business, injured her back, and temporarily lost her job, all in a short period of time) to Cora (who was raised in poverty, spent ten years in an abusive relationship, and now struggles to raise six children in a drug-infested neighborhood). As the author documents these women's experiences, she also debunks many of the myths about welfare: she reveals that welfare is not generous (welfare families remain below the poverty line, even with government assistance); that the majority of women on welfare are not long-term welfare dependents; that welfare does not run in families; that “welfare mothers” do not keep having children in order to increase their payments (women on welfare have, on average, two children); and that almost half of all women on welfare turned to it after a divorce. At a time when welfare has become a hotly debated political issue, Faces of Poverty gives us the facts. The debate surrounding welfare will continue as each of the 50 states struggles to reform their welfare programs, and this debate will turn on the public's perception of the welfare population. The author offers insight into each of the reforms under consideration, and starkly demonstrates their implications for poor women and children. She provides a window into these women's lives, portraying their hopes and fears, and their struggle to live with dignity.

This book is freely available in an open access edition thanks to the generous support of the University of California Libraries.

This book uses documents that allow an intimate look at two crises that wracked and ultimately destroyed the convent of La Purísima Concepción in San Miguel el Grande, New Spain (Mexico). At the heart of each rebellion was an attempt by some nuns to impose a regimen of strict observance of their vows on the others, and the resistance mounted by those who had a different view of the convent and their own role in it. Would the community adopt as austere a lifestyle as they could endure, doing manual labor, suffering hunger and physical discomfort, deprived of the society of family and friends? Or would these women be allowed to lead comfortable and private lives when not at prayer? Drawing on an abundance of sources, including numerous letters written by the bishop and local vicar as well as nuns of both factions, this book gives us not just the voices but the personalities of the nuns and other actors.

This book is freely available in an open access edition thanks to the generous support of the University of California Libraries.